Which is why TO BE OR NOT TO.be is a very good idea. Six documentaries – three by Dutchspeaking directors and three by French-speaking directors – explore what “Belgium” means and provide some fascinating perspectives on the country’s past, present and future.

Although it’s not unusual to see artists from both sides of the language border working together, it is highly unusual to see funding coming from both quarters. But in this case it did. Support came from French TV station ARTE and from Flemish broadcaster VRT, as well as the audio-visual fund of the French-speaking community. But TO BE OR NOT TO.be was spearheaded by the French-speaking public broadcaster RTBF and the Flemish Audio-Visual Fund (VAF).

“When the head of documentaries at RTBF asked his boss if he could contact us to help develop this project, his boss said ‘sure, if you’re ready to waste your time’,” remembers Pierre Drouot, director of VAF. “But within two weeks we had made the decision to go ahead with it with them.” It was the first time the Flemish organisation had collaborated with a French-speaking institution. “It was very agreeable and constructive. We did not reproduce the problems of Belgium in our collaboration,” says Drouot with a smile.

After the call was put out for documentaries on the theme of “Belgium”, the organisations received 114 entries. They had to whittle it down to six for the series. It of course wasn’t easy, but they looked for “diversity, originality and themes of the past and of the future,” explains Drouot.

The 50-minute films will air two at a time on RTBF over the next few weeks. Each film contains both Dutch and French and will be subtitled in French where appropriate. Although the French portions will not be subtitled in Dutch, the films will eventually be released on DVD with both Dutch and French subtitles.

Films will air at 22.00 on RTBF as follows:

29 March: Luckas Vander Taelen and Pascal Verbeken’s Het beloofde land (The Promised Land) takes a look back at a somewhat forgotten history of mass Flemish immigration into Wallonia in the early part of the 20th century when work in industry and the mines was plentiful and the economic situation in Flanders was depressed – the exact opposite of the situation today (photo above). La Royale Harmonie by well-known documentarian Manu Bonmariage seeks the opinions of both experts and regular folk from the south of the country on the possibility of a Belgium split.

5 April: Of all the films in the series, this one might just be the most fun: In Geertrui Coppens Een Belgisch verhaal (A Belgian Story), two journalists – one Flemish, one Walloon – organise a footrace between colleagues from each of their language territories. As they run along the Flanders/Wallonia border they talk about what separates – and unites – Belgium. Ça rime et ça rame comme tartine et boterham (we’re not going to try to translate that) finds a Frenchspeaking Brussels woman learning Dutch while searching for her Flemish roots.

12 April: Filmmaker Jacques Duez, meanwhile, turns to the country’s children in België in al zijn staten (Belgium in All its Forms), and they come up with wonderfully mixedup versions of contemporary society that come uncomfortably close to mimicking politicians, while Maya Van Leemput’s Belgische toekomsten (Belgian Futures) imagines four possible outcomes for the Belgium of tomorrow.

www.vaf.be